Bible Study from September 14th, 2019

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Earl of Dunmore, CSB

His name was Charles Adolphus Murray, the 7th Earl of Dunmore (Peerage of Scotland). He published a book of his travels, The Pamirs, which he presented to Queen Victoria.

The Pamirs: Being a narrative of a year’s expedition on horseback and on foot through Kashmir, Western Tibet, Chinese Tartary and Russian Central Asia. He started from Rawalpindi in April 1892, reaching Samarkand in January 1893. He had ridden and walked 2500 miles, traversing forty-one mountain passes and sixty-nine rivers.

He was a distinguished officer in the British Army and also served Queen Victoria as a lord-in-waiting. A few years after he witnessed his wife’s healing in 1892, he sought Christian Science treatment for himself when a surgeon pronounced his condition incurable. He wholeheartedly accepted the teachings of Christian Science and in five weeks was completely healed.

In 1901, Lord and Lady Dunmore and their two daughters, Lady Victoria and Lady Mildred, had Normal class at the invitation of Mrs. Eddy.

— Notes shared by Thomas from NY

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“Across the years comes drifting the memorable testimony of the 7th Earl of Dunmore, written before he passed in 1907:

‘I never knew the meaning of real happiness until I became a Christian Scientist. Amusements, relaxations, tastes, and pursuits that seemed to me in the old days the only things that made life worth living, I now know had never the true ring of happiness about them; they afforded me but a spurious kind of satisfaction, which I, in my ignorance of what life really means, mistook for happiness. The world that one day appeared to me so full of what I mistook for happiness and joy, would the very next day appear to me to be gloomy and miserable, full of doubt and discord; whereas to-day there is no shadow of uncertainty over the world as revealed to me in Christian Science, but a lasting sense of peace, sunshine, happiness and love. Even money money troubles can have no power to disturb the equanimity of the Christian Scientist, once he has brought himself to realise that God – and not man – is the source of all supply.'”

— Excerpt from Mary Baker Eddy by Lyman P. Powell, page 31

(Note): From Twelve Years With Mary Baker Eddy by Irving Tomlinson, page 56, is an account of a healing of a child related to Lord and Lady Dunore and their 2 daughters by Mrs Eddy (- over a page in length) when they visited her at Concord.

— Excerpt and Note shared from Ann from England

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Book — The Revelation of Christianu by The Earl of Dunmore, C.S.B.

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You know my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled by the iron feet of oppression … If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. And if we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer that never came down to Earth. If we are wrong, justice is a lie, love has no meaning. And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until ‘justice runs down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.’

— Martin Luther King, Jr., Address to the first Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) Mass Meeting, at Holt Street Baptist Church, Dec. 5, 1955

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19 — WATCH lest you endeavor to interpret the Bible with any sense of God being separated from man, or operating in the universe except through man. It might even be helpful to declare that man is the expressed activity of God, or God in action, if such a statement would aid one in eliminating any sense that God operates apart from His reflection, man. When the Bible says, “Thus saith the Lord,” it means that divine Mind was expressed through the demonstration some individual made to voice God.

— Excerpt from 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter

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Amos 1:3

Thus saith the Lord

Lest it should be thought that the words that Amos spoke were his own, and he spake them of himself, this and the following prophecies are prefaced in this manner; and he begins with the nations near to the people of Israel and Judah, who had greatly afflicted them, and for that reason would be punished; which is foretold, to let Israel see that those judgments on them did not come by chance; and lest they should promise themselves impunity from the prosperity of these sinful nations; and to awaken them to a sense of their sin and danger, who might expect the visitation of God for their transgressions; as also to take off all offence at the prophet, who began not with them, but with their enemies: for three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I will not turn away [the punishment] thereof;

— from John Gill’s Exposition of the Bible

John Gill preached in the same church as C. H. Spurgeon although about 100 years ealier. (John Gill was pastor of church until 1771) (Spurgeon was called in 1852 to pastor the church)

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Plumb-line: a line directed to the center of gravity in the earth.

— From 1828 Webster’s Dictionary

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The device used is a line with a weight fastened to one end which is held by hand or suspended from a fixed object with the other end and then one measures from this reference line to make sure something (i.e. a wall) is perfectly straight and/or vertical. The beauty of a plumb line is that it doesn’t matter who uses it it never lies. There is no place or person that can hang a plumb-line and not get the same result.

The reason that there is active work to get rid of the Bible is that the Bible is the plumb-line. If there is nothing to measure from, nobody knows what is right (God’s Word) or wrong (everything else).

(Deut. 32:3 Because I will publish the name of the LORD: ascribe ye greatness unto our God.)

(4 He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.)

— by Mike Pupko

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If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.

— Author Unknown

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God employed a shepherd, a herdsman, to reprove and warn the people. Those to whom God gives abilities for his services, ought not to be despised for their origin, or their employment.

— From Matthew Henry Concise Commentary for Amos 1

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They thought performance of the rites was all that God required, and with that done, they could do whatever they pleased —— an essential pagan notion.

— Introduction to Amos, NIV Bible

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Our problems and lessons in life are here to lead us back to God.

— From Roundtable

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For, as King rightly notes, if we do not have justice as a plum line, then the just becomes that which is merely legal, and that which is legal becomes just.

— by By J. Leavitt Pearl

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Israel was a wall, a strong wall, which God himself reared as a defence to his sanctuary. The Lord now seems to stand upon this wall. He measures it; it appears to be a bowing, bulging wall. Thus God would bring the people of Israel to the trial, would discover their wickedness; and the time will come, when those who have been spared often, shall be spared no longer.

— From Matthew Henry Concise Commentary for Amos 7

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When God said He was setting a plumb line among His people, He was declaring an end to their attempts to justify their crooked ways. The Lord was setting the standard. God does not negotiate His laws. He does not change with the whims of culture (Numbers 23:19). God’s moral law is the plumb line against which we determine right and wrong (John 17:17). Just as a carpenter’s plumb line is not subject to the opinions or the frustration of the worker, so God’s moral standards are not subject to the opinions of man. Wise people are those who line up their lives according to God’s plumb line rather than trying to move it to satisfy their own agendas.

— From GotQuestions.org

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The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

— Proverb

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